Alleluia (part two)

In addition to some great hymns and organ music this week, we will have musical offerings from both the choir and the bell choir.  The choir will be giving up their usual anthem slot so the bell choir can play "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name."  I've even convinced the somewhat reluctant group to play from the front of the church so you can see them play.

During communion, the chancel choir will sing "Praise God, the Lord, Ye Christians All" by Heinrich Schutz, who was among the most important composers of the 17th century.  His music falls in the gap between Renaissance and Classical, between contrapuntal chant and four-part chorales.  In the piece's opening section, you'll hear the same motifs get passed from section to section in the choir, while the piece closes with the whole choir singing Alleluia.  To modern ears, the Alleluias shift from major to minor, along with a sharp dynamic contrast.  The piece is technically modal, but such details aren't needed to appreciate the unique nature of the music.  Incidentally, the ELW includes one hymn tune by Schutz (ELW 573, "My Soul Now Magnifies the Lord").  It's a great example of how the church has preserved the work of some of history's greatest composers.  Where else could you hear a tune by Schutz this week?

I hope you enjoy the music of the choir and bell choir this week.  Be sure to thank a (volunteer) choir or bell choir member for their dedication, and provide feedback to me on the music anytime!

Alleluia!

It's after Valentine's Day and we can still sing Alleluia in church, because Lent is still weeks away.  Hard to believe, isn't it?  The weather this week has only made it harder yet, because the only snow drifts left in my neighborhood are the remnants of snow piles next to driveways.  Maybe that groundhog knew what he was talking about?  (Or maybe it'll be back to reality next week, but we can still enjoy it for now!)

This week we get to open and close the service with two of my favorite hymns.  The opening hymn will be "O Holy Spirit Enter In" (ELW 786), a text that seems like such a perfect opening prayer that it will also be the meditative prelude.  The composer of this great tune is Phillip Nicolai.  He was born a decade after Martin Luther had died, and he served as a Lutheran pastor in Germany in the late 16th century.  His tunes have inspired composers ever since, particularly the chorale tune we're singing this week, which is sometimes referred to as "the queen of chorales."

Our closing hymn will be "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" (ELW 631).  The Welsh hymn tune by Rowland Prichard will be well known, and the particular text here is by the prolific Charles Wesley.  I think the strong 3/4 meter has a great lilting, lusty quality that makes it a joy to sing.

That upbeat 3/4 tempo will be echoed in the postlude as well, when I play an arrangement of the Easter tune "O Sons and Daughters of the Lord" by Deshayes.  Despite being an Easter text, the hymn is in a minor key which may be part of why it no longer appears in our hymnal.  But it's a beautiful chorale, and the setting has plenty of fun flourishes for the organ and a big ending, if you stick around for it.

The 4-H hymn?

As we were singing our hymn of the day, "Oh, That the Lord Would Guide My Ways" (ELW 772), this past Sunday, part of the last verse caught my eye.  Here is the entirety of the verse:

Make me to walk in your commands,
'Tis a delightful road;
Nor let my head or heart or hands
Offend against my God.

I hadn't noticed it in my preparation earlier in the week, but this verse lists three of the four H-words that constitute the four areas of personal development of the organization 4-H.  (It only took me the rest of the day to come up with the missing one - health.)  Despite growing up in rural Minnesota and despite having many friends and classmates involved in 4-H, I was never a member.  But I think the mission of the organization is pretty widely known.  Similar to the many other youth organizations, they encourage students to do their best while engaging with their community.  This is spelled out explicitly in the 4-H pledge:

I pledge my HEAD to clearer thinking,
my HEART to greater loyalty,
my HANDS to larger service,
and my HEALTH to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.

While the text by Isaac Watts was first published in 1719, it engages in dialogue across the centuries with this mission statement.  Each of these statements is an important aspect of faith, good citizenship, and a well-lived life.

The only unfortunate thing about the hymn (from my perspective today at least) is that the phrase is negative.  It talks about preventing offense.  While abstaining from offense and sin is important, it's still only a first step.  We also need engagement and participation - in our families, community, country, and church!  To take a bit of poetic license, allow me to suggest a minor rewrite:

And let my head and heart and hands
Do service for my God.

Ubi caritas et amor

"Where charity and love prevail" is among the most well-known of the Latin chants, generally considered to come from the 9th century.  It's a hymn of forgiveness and joy, peace and reconciliation, and therefore perfect for singing during communion, as we will this week.  We'll be singing the text to the more popular chorale tune, but during the interlude between the communion hymns, I'll play a few lines of the chant.  Listen and see if you recognize that snippet of chant melody from centuries ago.

Singing the hymn also foreshadows Maundy Thursday, an occasion where the text is often used.  But Maundy Thursday is many days in the future still.  The time before Lent stretches on this year, and we get to enjoy music of praise and celebration during these cold winter days.  That's why we get to end the service with "Joyful Joyful" and enjoy a postlude with the title "Alleluia!"  And the choir will be sharing an upbeat anthem of praise: "O Praise the Name of the Lord."  I hope that all of the music lifts your spirits this weekend!

Of course, you can sing!

It continues to flabbergast me how many people respond to my urgings to sing (whether in the choir, like I'd really prefer, or even just in the congregation during a communion hymn, for instance) with a comment along the lines of "I can't sing" or "My voice is just terrible" or "You wouldn't want to hear me."  It's certainly not a new sentiment, and all church choir directors face it.  Let me try to change your mind (at least a little) with a few arguments:

1. You will never meet a kindergarten-aged child who "can't sing."  They can all write and paint and play kickball like pros too.  It seems that every five-year-old is a Renaissance child with an incredible range of skills.  Where do those skills go?  When do people first learn that they can't do something, especially something so primal and expressive as sing?

2. Some evolutionary biologists claim that singing is closely related to "baby talk."  The pitch of our speaking voice and the melody of lullabies are an important part of the parent-child bond and the development of language in children.  Truly, language is music.  In English, a question will rise in pitch at the end of the sentence.  Singing is thus just an extension of something you do naturally every day.

3. We simply get better at things that we try.  I worked several summers as the music director at a summer stock theatre where some of the actors would come to the first rehearsal and announce they were tone deaf.  Just one week of rehearsals later, they would proudly be singing solo lines in the show's chorus.  (Furthermore, at Bethany, we have such a strong core group of singers that you can rely on them to help lead while you gradually improve and gain confidence.)

All of these arguments were summed up by author Amy Chua (the Yale professor now famous or infamous for her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother).  I heard her give an interview recently in which I was impressed with her charm, wit, and generally easy-going nature - perhaps in contrast to the popular perception of her.  She stressed that while she pushed her daughters to succeed in many areas, it was simply because she knew they could.  She had no time for the argument "I'm no good at math."  Rather than letting them give up, she insisted that with practice and time, her daughters would become good at math.  I'm not going to claim that I back her parenting methods 100%, but that attitude that we can succeed and excel at complicated tasks is an important mind-set.  I hope and pray that it's an attitude that can help jump start the American economy, keep churches and other organizations active and vital, and even motivate a few more people to join the church choir.

So she messed up the lyrics

I've told people that being from Minnesota originally (and therefore not allowed to cheer for the Packers) and now living in northeast Ohio (and therefore not allowed to cheer for the Steelers) meant that I could mostly ignore the game this weekend.  Neither outcome would lead to much celebration or heartbreak.  On the other hand, the musical performances and the commercials always demand a certain level of attention, and they certainly didn't disappoint this year.

Let's start with the obvious observation: Christina Aguilera screwed up the lyrics to the National Anthem.  Big deal.  We all mistakes, and what musician hasn't played or sung a wrong note or word?  I once accompanied a college recital where the singer forgot his lyrics and proceeded to replace the Italian lyrics by listing every kind of pasta he could recall.  (The memory of an Italian aria reduced to "ravioli macaroni et lasgna" still makes me laugh.)  The Super Bowl may be the worst imaginable time to forget the words, but at least they rhymed and she powered through to the end.  You've got to give her credit for singing it live and for maintaining composure.  One might wonder if next year there will be a teleprompter, or even a few helpful words scribbled on the singer's palm.

My problem with the performance wasn't her little mistake, it was the overly dramatic, self-indulgent nature of the performance.  Don't get me wrong, the song isn't sacrosanct and immune from interpretation.  Recordings of Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner can make you hear it in a whole new way.  But Aguilera wasn't trying to communicate her passion and patriotism and deep connection with the lyrics.  She was simply closing her eyes, raising her free hand in the air, and generally mimicking every performance you'll see on American Idol this season.  Singers now strike certain poses simply because it's part of the accepted theatricality of the ritual, not because it's spontaneous or motivated by the song itself.  How authentic can a performance be if it looks exactly like every other performance?

Aguilera violated my pet peeve by singing with her eyes closed.  Even at the community theatre level, actors know that you can't communicate with an audience if your eyes aren't open.  You can't engage with fellow actors, audience, or even an everyday conversation.  Just imagine if a man proposed to his wife without looking into her eyes; would it seem sincere?  Closing your eyes while singing only puts distance between you and your audience.  It's one of the reasons that so-called "praise bands" violate the purpose of corporate worship.  They strike poses to demonstrate their religious fervor, but their artificiality separates them from the congregation.

We sing hymns with our eyes open.  Partly because it's easier to see the text, but mostly because when we sing we are joining together in praise, prayer, and proclamation.  We are a community of faith, flawed and imperfect but in it together - much like our nation.  If only Aguilera had remembered that.  It would have made for a great performance, missed lyrics and all.

Planning

It's one of the ironies of my work at Bethany, but the more time I spend planning and preparing and thinking about church music in any given week, the less I find myself blogging.  I suppose it's in part because I'm busy daydreaming and forming ideas, which doesn't always lend itself to sharing more fully-formed thoughts, the way I like to on this blog.  But as I was reading the text of this week's closing hymn, "The Church of Christ, In Every Age," its message of continuing change and mission and rebirth only seemed to urge me to keep working:

The church of Christ, in ev'ry age
Beset by change, but Spirit led,
Must claim and test its heritage
And keep on rising from the dead.

Discussing our musical heritage (while hopefully keeping it new and fresh) could be one way to describe my goals in writing this blog.  But the hymn presents a message that all members of all churches need to heed.  We have hundreds of years of heritage that we must not only honor and claim as our own but continue to test and question and refresh.  I find it particularly interesting that the rest of the hymn's text portrays the need for engagement "across the world" and "across the street."  The hymn is sometimes subtitled "The caring church" because it advocates direct engagement with problems in the world around us.

The theme of the week is justice, which requires our engagement and action.  Notice how many of our hymns mention a desire to act as a servant leader, not preaching or judging but demonstrating and encouraging a joyful Christian life.  In the words of this week's choir anthem "Let All the World in Every Corner Sing."  We can tackle difficult problems with joy and hope and songs of praise.  And we can even find time to engage with in those activities amid our busy lives and our work planning for the weeks (and holidays) ahead.